This blog is about family, including those in my family tree, the primary focus, but also the family of faith, the family of community, and ultimately the family of man. It is a journey of discovery: Who they were, What they did (and Why), and When, Where, and How they lived.

Tuesday, April 11, 2017

In the news, Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Information from some sites may not be reliable, or may not be vetted.Some sources may require subscription.

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from Asia Times Online

Did Rex Tillerson dance to China’s tune?For all his tough talk in Tokyo and Seoul, Rex Tillerson adopted a remarkably soft tone when he met China’s president and officials in Beijing during the last stop of his first Asian tour as US secretary of state last week. Tillerson said the US would like to develop the relationship with China based on “the spirit of no conflict, no confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation.”

Archbishop of Canterbury to make high-level, 12 day trip to the Holy Land
The Archbishop of Canterbury will make a high-level 12 day visit to the Holy Land in May, Lambeth Palace confirmed today. In one of his longest trips as Archbishop, Justin Welby will take in Jordan and Bethlehem as well as Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Galilee, and focus on the themes of reconciliation, Christian unity and the persecution of Christians in the Middle East. The Archbishop's visit will be largely aimed at affirming the presence of Christian communities in the Holy Land. But as ever in the region, there will be a political dimension: Archbishop Welby is likely to meet with the Israeli and Palestinian Presidents, Reuven Rivlin and Mahmoud Abbas respectively as well as other leaders, including King Abdullah II of Jordan in Amman. A meeting is being sought with the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

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from Competitive Enterprise Institute

More Anxiety over White House Budget for EPAThis hard work can begin only when the Trump administration reaches out to Congress. By not having done so to date, and potentially alienating allies, the administration has made its goals much more difficult to achieve.

'Unhappy' day as UK delivers Brexit letter
European Council chief Donald Tusk said that "damage control" starts for the EU, as British PM Theresa May has invoked Article 50 nine months after the UK voted to leave the bloc.

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from FEE(Foundation for Economic Education)

[Information from this site may not be reliable.]

Trump's Budget Paves the Road to Fiscal Failure
President Donald Trump has issued his preliminary federal budget proposal looking to the U.S. government’s next fiscal year. What it shows is that there will likely be no attempt to reduce the size and cost of most of the American interventionist-welfare state.

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from First Things

THE BIBLE AND COLONIAL AMERICAWas there ever a golden Protestant age of social thinking derived almost entirely from Scripture to the exclusion of nature, reason, or secular sources? Not really, despite Mark Noll’s claims to the contrary. Mark Noll’s reliance on a reductive caricature of Protestant political theology causes him to give a false impression of how most colonial American Protestants deployed sacred and secular sources in their political thought.

The Unforeseen Consequences of Transgenderism
Determining one’s own sex or that of another used to be a simple matter. First, there was the matter of appearance, whether a person looked like a male or looked like a female. If appearance produced some uncertainties, one could determine sex by examining a person’s birth certificate. If appearance and a birth certificate produced uncertainties, the ultimate, absolute proof of sex was a person’s chromosomes; XX marked a female, and XY marked a male. Case closed. But those old-fashioned, simple methods of identifying sex have changed. In fact, relying on those old tried-and-true methods of sex identification qualifies one for opprobrium, with the charge of being homophobic.

It’s been a tough week for James Comey. He took pot shots from both Republicans and Democrats on Tuesday during his hearing. One of Comey’s critics was of course the honorable Trey Gowdy who was very upset that James Comey hadn’t solved the string of leaks that have been a huge problem for the Trump administration.OH MY GOD! James Comey Crawling On The Floor After What Trump Just Did To Destroy Him!House Intelligence chair Devin Nunes dropped a bombshell today. He confirmed that President elect-Trump and his team were surveilled all the way until Inauguration Day.

Gorsuch Gets Emotional Talking End of Life
Questioned on assisted suicide, Supreme Court nominee chokes up: ‘I’ve been there with my dad’
Day 3 of Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation hearing produced an emotional moment Wednesday when Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) confronted the Supreme Court nominee over the issue of assisted suicide.

For Keynesians and Austrians, "Uncertainty" Means Two Different ThingsKeynesian economics has witnessed a remarkable resurgence since the crisis of 2008. The inability of mainstream economics to predict or explain the crisis led many economists to become skeptical of its core macroeconomic tenets. Several have turned the clock back to the ideas of Keynes to make sense of the housing bubble and the ensuing recession. After the 2008 crisis, many Keynesians found a new appreciation for uncertainty in economics. Unfortunately, they misunderstand how uncertainty works.

Are Central Banks Worthy of Trust?In an essay on Edmund Burke's view of the nature of government, Murray Rothbard quoted him as saying: "In vain you tell me that Artificial Government is good, but that I fall out only with the Abuse. The Thing! The Thing itself is the Abuse!" Our complaint isn't just with "abuse of the system," it is with the system itself! The system is the abuse. Everything else is a symptom, a surface issue.

How the Government Ruined US Healthcare — and What Can Be DoneGovernment’s meddling in the healthcare business has been disastrous from the get-go. Since 1910, when Republican William Taft gave in to the American Medical Association’s lobbying efforts, most administrations have passed new healthcare regulations. With each new law or set of new regulations, restrictions on the healthcare market went further, until at some point in the 1980s, people began to notice the cost of healthcare had skyrocketed.

Don't Confuse Immigration with NaturalizationAs the immigration debate goes on, many commentators continue to sloppily ignore the difference between the concept of naturalization and the phenomenon of immigration. While the two are certainly related, they are also certainly not the same thing. Recognizing this distinction can help us to see the very real differences between naturalization, which is a matter of political privilege, and immigration, which simply results from the exercise of private property rights. Immigration results naturally from allowing persons to exercise their property rights. Naturalization, on the other hand, is a political act.

BRICS Plus: 'the Bloc That Will Dominate the World'The proposed enlargement of BRICS (BRICS Plus) with the inclusion of powerful emerging economies would help fill the void created by US trade protectionism, international analyst Adrian Zelaia told Sputnik.

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from USA Politics Today
[Information from this site may not be reliable.]

President Trump’s personal communications may have been incidentally captured as part of a surveillance sweep conducted by the Obama administration, House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes revealed on Wednesday.

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from Yakima Herald-Republic

Washington justice to feds: Keep immigration agents away
The chief justice of the Washington state Supreme Court on Wednesday urged the Department of Homeland Security to keep immigration agents away from courthouses, saying it's "deeply troubling" that lawyers and judges have reported seeing more of them recently. In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, Chief Justice Mary Fairhurst said the agents' presence could scare people away from courthouses, including domestic violence victims and witnesses in criminal trials.